Halo Campaign Evolved (PC) HDR Analysis

[KoKlusz]

Technical Info:

• Unreal Engine 5.5
• HDR available in the windowed mode
• Defaults to the peak brightness provided by EDID/OS calibration, but can be overridden in game
• Possible sRGB/G2.2 EOTF mismatch in HDR

HDR Settings:

CONTRAST - values range from -50 to +50, default is 0

Cursed, do not touch

BRIGHTNESS - exposure, values range from -50 to +50, default is 0

Does not scale linearly, default is close to around 450 nits screen brightness, -10 is around 300 nits, -18 is around 200 nits, -28 is around 100 nits.

No UI brightness controls, locked to 300 nits.

HDR - peak brightness, values range from 300 nits to 2000 nits, default value is chosen based on the EDID/OS calibration.

Review:

Seems to be very vanilla Unreal HDR, except for the LUTs that apparently are generated in HDR and use Wide Color Gamut. This also raises the question regarding the gamma mismatch, as SDR looks rather crushed, this has been often the case as of late. The UI is definitely mismatched though, since you can see the nasty banding in the main menu.

It's not terrible, but still, very meh.

Comparisons

Warning

In order to view them correctly on Windows, you must use a Chromium browser with Windows HDR enabled and the brightness slider set to the value of 31

SDR Defaults (450 nits, sRGB)
HDR Defaults
SDR Defaults (450 nits, Gamma 2.2)

[Aampet]

this is not listed in the game codex

[KoKlusz]

Added, thanks